Someday We'll Find It
by Iellix
Summary: Songfic, oneshot. Yuna reflects on rainbows and other beliefs, wondering how she and everyone else could put so much trust into things that are so completely out of their control...


Hi, gang, I'm back! I'm on a oneshot kick for now. Oneshots in first person. I really love first person… if you guys get annoyed by that, just let me know and I'll go back the third person again.

Summary: Yuna is finally reunited with Tidus. On the way back from Zanarkand, she reflects on putting ones' trust in things that are so completely out of their control.

Disclaimer: I don't own Yuna, Tidus, the Celsius, or anything else I rip from Square during the duration of this story. Nor do I own the song, "Rainbow Connection" but I don't know who wrote it. For the record, I'm using the Kenny Loggins version for lyrics reference. I do, however, own my laptop, which is currently my new favorite toy. (My dad still thinks I bought it for college. Silly old man.)

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He was right when he said that I'd changed. I really _have_ changed—and not just the initial and obvious changes, like my hair and wardrobe. My beliefs have changed. That's the biggie. I used to believe what I was told, no matter how silly it might seem. I always assumed that Yevon was right, that it was the only way to survive. Thinking back on it, I see how silly I really was. How could I have put all of my faith and everything that I do into this invisible force? It makes me wonder, sometimes.

_……Why are there so many songs about rainbows_

_……And what's on the other side?_

_……Rainbows are visions, only illusions,_

_……And rainbows have nothing to hide._

It's not that I haven't got faith in anything… it's just that I try to put faith in things that are… more realistic. I like to believe that people really _are_ good sometime in their lives. I like to think that even the most vile and revolting criminals have done something nice at least _once_ in their lives. Even if it was just to help an old lady across the street without beating them and robbing them afterwards. These days, my faith is in people. In human nature. I remember once reading in a book the phrase, "Even the most horrid of beasts isn't vile all the time." I like to believe it's true.

From up here on the deck of the Celsius, I can see everything as little miniatures. It puts everything in perspective sometimes, when you see houses as big as your fingernail and entire cities that would fit in your hands. Tidus went into the cabin for something to eat from Barkeep. I told him not to have his hopes too high—everyone loves Barkeep but he's not the greatest cook on the planet. But he does fish pretty well—I can give him that.

The clouds below me are dispersing. Dark clouds are moving to the west. They must have just had rain here… I can smell it even from up here. Down below, I imagine there are little kids coming out of their houses to play after the storm, mothers coming out to hang their laundry on the line, fathers heading back out to work if they were outside. The world comes to life again.

If there was rain, then there's probably…

A rainbow. I can see it, now. It's really vibrant and bright, not dim and halfhearted. From the airship, the rainbow looks like a circle, but from the ground it's just an ark with the ends hidden somewhere along the horizon. I bet those kids down there coming outside to play are going to see it, and then they'll follow it until it's dark outside, looking for the end of the rainbow. And then the next time they see a rainbow, they'll try it all over again.

_……Rainbows are visions, but only illusions_

_……Rainbows have nothing to hide._

_……And so we are told and some choose to believe it._

_……I know that they're wrong, wait and see._

_……But someday we'll find it,_

_……The Rainbow Connection_

_……The Lovers, the Dreamers, and me._

Pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. Making wishes on shooting stars or on the first star of the night. Talking to the Man in the Moon. They were such silly childhood beliefs that many people drop by the time they grow up, but maybe every once in a while they'll try again, just for the nostalgia of it. In many ways, Yevon was the ultimate "rainbow pot of gold," the ultimate shooting star wish. It was a belief that everyone held onto, in hopes that it would bring them happiness whilst they slept. In hopes that, somehow, someway, everything would be all right.

In a way, I'm almost sorry for what I did, to destroy the Yevon faith. People need that ray of hope in their lives. People need somewhere to turn when everything goes completely wrong and they feel like they've hit rock bottom. They'd go to the temples and pray to the Fayth, and that would sometimes be all it took. Maybe Lady Yunalesca was right when we fought her, two years ago in the belly of the Zanarkand temple. She said that false hope is better than no help at all. Maybe she was right. Grownups need a rainbow, too, every once in a while.

Yevon was the rainbow for grownups. Even though it was all a terrible falsehood and a horrible lie, I still feel bad for ripping it down and exposing it the way I did. Yevon united the people, it gave them something to hope on, even though in the long run it did more harm than good.

People tend to put a lot of trust into things that can never really help them. It's just like the rainbow, it's just like the shooting star. Everybody knows shooting stars will never grant real wishes. Everybody knows that there's not _really_ a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. A rainbow has no end, it's a circle. Of course, I'm never going to tell that to a little kid, whose very existence is based on magic and wishes and faerie stories.

_……Who said that every wish would be heard and answered_

_……When wished on the morning star?_

_……Somebody thought of that,_

_……And someone believed it._

_……Look what it's done so far._

But it's good to question things that we're told, even if it goes against literally everybody else. Two years ago, we were against the world, we destroyed the only known means for defeating Sin and were determined to finally end a thousand years of lies, of a seemingly endless spiral of death. And we did. Because of one person questioning a thousand years of tradition, questioning what everybody thought was the right thing to do. Even I never questioned it. I knew and accepted my fate very early in life. I expected to die at the hands of the Final Aeon.

I owe him my life.

I've changed a lot from that experience. I know now that I shouldn't believe too much in stories or do exactly what I'm told. To accept a fate is no better than giving up your life. With me, it wasn't even _"if_ I die fighting Sin," it was _"when_ I die fighting Sin." I had no aspects of my life planned out past my pilgrimage. I always assumed that that was it.

Even though human nature is just as much out of my control as are rainbows and shooting stars, it's something more concrete. It's not like I'm faithless and believe only in myself. These days my trust is in people. In going out and doing instead of waiting. That was the thing with Yevon—people never actually _did_ anything. They just figured that the Summoners would take care of everything for them. These days everyone is involved with everyone else. People are going out and _doing_ and _looking_ and _finding._

They're joining new groups and making their own stories now. For the first time in a thousand years, Spira is free to do exactly as it wants. Whenever it wants. It's a freedom I think will take some getting used to. But it's a nice feeling to know that new rainbows are coming up all over the place. Everyone has their own rainbow, now.

_……What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing?_

_……And what do we think we might see?_

_……Someday we'll find it,_

_……The Rainbow Connection_

_……The Lovers, the Dreamers, and me._

_……All of us under its spell,_

_……We know that it's probably magic._

And people keep looking for something… history. All of those people trying to uncover Spira's past may just be trying to find something else to believe in. There had to be _something_ people believed in before Yevon came around, right? I expect he'd know, only I'd rather not ask him. He doesn't seem the religious type, anyway. But it does spark my curiosity. Did Spira have a faith a thousand years ago? Or were they… atheists? Maybe that's how Zanarkand got the way it was—people weren't too busy trying to please a deity.

I think we could all learn from that mindset. Focusing on the teachings of Yevon left the people of Spira terrified of machina, which set the world back so far. We were pretty primordial, now that I think about it. A lot of people didn't have indoor plumbing, And they had outhouses. Yuck.

As for me… I don't know if I want to believe in a religion again. It's been like a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders. I don't have to change myself or live a certain way because a prophecy or a book or some priests say that I have to. And what good is a religion that makes you lie to yourself? What good is a religion that says that women are not worth as much as cattle, or that you aren't allowed to eat certain foods, or you aren't allowed to love the person you want to love? How is that worth it? I just can't approve.

I don't like this idea of trusting something that could, in fact, turn out to be nothing at all. I wonder if that's close-minded of me. Maybe it is. But it's like a puppy who tries to sniff everything in sight. Eventually it will sniff something unfriendly, like a porcupine, and it'll get jabbed in the nose. And from that day on, the puppy is careful whenever it goes to sniff something new. It's the same with me. I got jabbed in the nose, and now I'm careful where I place my faith.

I know it doesn't make me a bad person, but there are still some people who resent me for what I did. Mostly the priests of Yevon who had nowhere to go and nothing to do once their religion fell. They had to do something else now, and a lot of them were too old to have a midlife crisis. Most of them joined New Yevon, but a handful of them… killed themselves. I try not to blame myself for that, but it seems all roads lead to Yuna.

_……Have you been half-asleep and have you heard voices?_

_……I've heard them calling my name._

_……Is this the sweet sound that calls young sailors?_

_……The voice might be one and the same._

I need to stop worrying so much about everything, though. It's all out of my control. I can't control the things people think or say or believe about me, any more than I can control the rainbows or the shooting stars. And it makes just as much sense for me to put a lot of thought into it. There's nothing I can do about it. I'm going to spend my life focusing on things that I _can_ do.

I'm done chasing nothing. I won't say that I'm done chasing rainbows—a rainbow once in a while is a good thing. But I won't put my everything into something that could possibly not exist. Taking a harmless peek every now and then at the end of a rainbow or wishing on a falling star isn't going to hurt me any—just as long as I don't believe that it will solve all of my problems. Because it won't. I'm the only person who can solve my problems.

It's still slightly surprising to me that some people still believe, if only half-heartedly, in Yevon. And yet it's somehow _not_ surprising. I expected that some people would hold on to their old beliefs no matter what happened. It fascinates me. Their faith had betrayed them and yet they still believed it. I guess that's what people call "devotion." It could also be what people call, "pigheaded and stubborn," so I won't make any assumptions. Looking at it from the fence, did people really have any _proof_ that praying to the Fayth gave them the things they desired? The only Fayth I had ever met who cared at all was little Bahemut. And I don't think he ever talked to anyone else—it was just _him,_ and then later on it was me.

Even I can't say for sure whether Yevon had ever helped anybody. I certainly can't say for sure that it _didn't,_ but off the top of my head I can't think of any instances where Yevon would be the only explanation for some stroke of good fortune. I suppose people would do things on their own without knowing it, like that "mind over matter" stuff that Rikku is so into, but then they don't take any of the credit for it and instead they say that it was the work of the Fayth. Or something.

People relied so much on the Fayth and Yevon in general. It was the one constant in a world that slipped in and out of short Calms. They prayed to the Fayth when Sin wreaked havoc on the world, praying that a Summoner might vanquish the monster and bring them some peace. And when there was a Calm, they prayed for it to last just another season longer, or that it would be the elusive Eternal Calm. It never was.

Now they have to find something else to believe in. Something more concrete. I wonder what other people find faith in. Perhaps their loved ones, their friends and families. Perhaps they had faith in their leaders. Maybe they only had faith in themselves now. I wonder if anybody else is comparing Yevon to wishing on the stars, to the silliness and utter ridiculousness of it. I wonder if anyone else realizes that Yevon was the shooting star for the world. Maybe nobody else thinks the same way. That's what I get for spending a lot of time around Paine—I've become deep and introspective.

_……I've heard it too many times to ignore it._

_……It's something I'm supposed to be._

_……Someday we'll find it,_

_……The Rainbow Connection_

_……The Lovers, the Dreamers, and me._

I don't know what will become of Spira now that their rainbow is gone. I hope the people will learn not to put so much faith into something so silly. But I know that somewhere down the line, something else will take shape. Who knows—in a thousand years, maybe _I'll_ be a deity worshipped by Spira. Nobody does, that's the thing. But I have no need to focus on the future so far away as a thousand years. I only have to focus on my own future. And I'll probably focus a lot on Spira's future, too, no matter how much I'd like to leave them to their own devices. I guess some things will never change.

Maybe I'll go back into a temple a few times. Just to look around, just the for heck of it. It won't mean much to me, as far as faith goes. But it'll just be for old-times' sake, for nostalgia. So much of my life was spent there, it's hard to tear away from it like that. Even though I don't believe in it anymore, at all… it's still a temple. It's what my father and countless Summoners before him died for. It was what _I_ was well prepared to die for. It was my rainbow.

The rainbow from earlier is beginning to fade, now, and the sun is starting to set down there. I bet the fathers are coming in to clean up before dinner, and mothers are calling for their children to come inside. Some of the children will probably look for the end of the rainbow until it's too dark to see, then find their way home by feel and fall into bed, too tired to eat. But they won't be discouraged, I know that. The next rainbow they see, they're going to follow it. They'll never give up on finding that pot of gold.

And then they'll grow up, and without really knowing it, they'll have shed the belief that there's a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. It won't happen all at once. It happens gradually. They'll realize that stars won't grant wishes and the Man in the Moon is just a bunch of shadows.

But no matter how old they get, they'll still remember, even though they don't believe it. And maybe, every once in a while, they'll take a walk to the end of the rainbow, make a wish on a falling star, or strike up one little conversation with the Man in the Moon. By then, of course, they will have found their own rainbows to follow. Their own grown-up rainbows.

Whatever we believe is our own choice to make. Nobody has the right to tell someone else to believe in this, that, or the other. The fall of Yevon wasn't the end, maybe, but the beginning. The beginning of something totally new, totally different… something real. Maybe it was the start of a _lot_ of somethings. Something for everybody. Everybody for something. But hopefully, people will learn not to go chasing rainbows forever. After all, if you keep chasing rainbows, you might miss a different kind of treasure on the way. But I hope they also learn that, once in a while, it's okay to make a wish… just for fun.

But I can't control it. It's out of my hands. It's out of everyone's hands. The only thing I have any control over is myself. And I think that's enough. I'm at the end of my rainbow. I've found my pot of gold. No more stalling for me—I have to make a life for myself now. No more false hopes and myths, no more lies and no more "maybes." I shouldn't fib, though. I'll go back into a temple someday, just to acknowledge that it's in my past, whether I like it or not. And I'll make a wish on a falling star, and maybe follow a rainbow until nightfall.

_……Someday we'll find it,_

_……The Rainbow Connection_

_……The Lovers, the Dreamers, and me._

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Okay, I'm FINISHED, and on the same day that I started, as well. That's rare for me. I have such a short attention span! Anyway… I hope this fic sounds like Yuna talking… I tried to make it sound like "Serious Yuna" and not "Charlie's Angels Yuna." (As Deplora so eloquently put it.) I hope you all enjoyed it. Drop a review and tell me what you think.


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